whirled away among the furious breakers, which tore it plank from plank, and strewed the relics of that goodly ship for miles along the shore.

It was wearing towards morning, and the wind was perceptibly falling when these wayfarers reached their destination. A candle burning in the window seemed the only sign of life in the whole slumbering town; and even that guttered and flickered low in its socket, an emblem of the life slowly burning itself out on the adjoining bed. A stentorious breathing, coming at irregular and ever-lengthening intervals, told that Sandie's granny was already setting out on her long journey--that she had closed her eyes for ever on all the things of time, even the ministrations of religion; and that the mysteries to which those ministrations can, at the best, but darkly point, would shortly be uncovered to her immortal view.

The minister was dried and warmed and refreshed, but there was little call for his services. The watchers were too weary with their watching to give much heed to consolation; he did, however, what was possible and retired to rest.

CHAPTER III

THE FIND.

Long ere daylight the storm had died away. The new-risen sun shone in a sky of transparent blue, with not a cirrhus rag to shew of the enswathing vapours of the night before.

The air, bracingly fresh but calm, stirred faintly among the sandhills by the shore, shaking out the bent and grasses laid limp and tangled by their drenching overnight.

When the minister set forth on his return, the sun still hung low over the eastern sea, and reddened the waves, foam-flecked and tossing in angry recollection of the lash of last night's gale. In the ebb they had shrunk far back across the sands, but again the tide had turned and was advancing. The fisher folk were not astir. No boats could be expected home that morning. Such as were away during the gale must have put in for refuge somewhere, or been swallowed by the sea; nor would any stir outside the harbour till the sea went down. Perforce they must rest; and they rested. The cottages were still shut up, and no smoke curled from the chimneys as Roderick rode over the roughly causewayed street, past the harbour, where a lugger or two swayed up and down upon the heaving tide, and down upon the sands beyond, that he might avoid the long detour of the night before.

The Effick Water spreads itself out into a small firth or bay some three or four miles round, but the mouth of this bay is encumbered by upstanding rocks and boulders, and about these a bar or beach has gathered, standing up out of the water at all times, save the highest tides, or when the sea is driven up by an easterly gale. Through this beach the Effick cuts a channel for its own escape, and that of the water in the bay at the tide's turn, but it is fordable at any time, and at low water is but an insignificant trickling over the shingly beach. The Point of Inverlyon divides Inverlyon bay and harbour from the Bay of Effick, it runs sharply out into the sea and completely conceals the one from the other; and, in those days of scanty provision for the ship-wrecked, a vessel might be driven ashore in the latter desolate bay without the people of the village being aware, especially if the catastrophe took place after dark; and their first intimation would be when in scanning the shore after a gale they came on the wreckage.

It was an hour or two after Roderick had started before the first band of prowlers set forth to search for the rejected spoils of victorious Ocean. The shore was solitary, and he was the first to come upon the tokens of the night's disaster. On passing the point, he found the shattered relics scattered on every side--boxes, barrels, planks, wreckage of every kind. By and by he came upon a stove-in boat, and a little further along the body of a drowned sailor lay upon the sand. He was but partly dressed, and the dark yellow tinge of his skin, the straight black hair, prominent features, and set of the eyes, as well as the long, strange-looking knife, tied securely to his waist, showed him to be a Lascar. So the ship probably had been an East Indiaman, had sailed in safety round the Cape, crossed the Bay of Biscay, and escaped who can tell how many perils, and all to be cast away in the end on this solitary shore, within a few leagues or hours of her destined haven.

Roderick dismounted and examined the poor fellow, but he was manifestly dead, and there was no dwelling near to which he might carry him; so he drew the body up above high-water mark, to await the searchers who were sure to arrive shortly in search of plunder. He had visitations and a meeting to fill up his day on getting home--service due, as he told himself, to the living, and therefore more important than ceremonial cares for the dead.

Hastening forward, he crossed the shingly beach at the mouth of the Effick, and reached the sands gathered about the base of the rocks, and sloping on the one side to the sea, on the other to the inner basin or firth of the little stream,--at high water a brimming lake, but now at the ebb a slimy hollow full of pools, boulders, seaweed, and mussel beds, where gulls and crows met to quarrel over the spoils of sea and land. There he came upon a sight sadder than the last, two women thrown together upon the sand, surrounded and partly covered with wreckage, as though a specially strong eddy had set in this direction, and there unburdened itself of its prey. The first he examined was clad in thin and peculiar garments of white cotton, a life-preserver was made fast about her body, and her hands clung with the inextricable grasp of death to the clothes of her companion. Her feet were bare, so was her head, her skin was a dark olive, and her dress and appearance showed her to be an Ayah or Indian maid, in attendance doubtless on some lady returning to Europe. Her long black hair was clotted and stained with blood, and closer inspection showed terrible wounds and bruises on the head, as though the waves had dashed and pounded her against the rocks before at length relinquishing their hold. Clearly there could be no hope of resuscitation there, and Roderick passed to the other.

From under pieces of plank and broken cabin furniture he was able at last to disentangle the form of a lady. She too was encased in a life-preserver, which in her case too had failed to save her life. The cruel rocks and breakers had made sure of that. Her head and face especially showed contusions and bruises of the most dreadful description, and there was a distortion of the features, as though her last thought had been one of agony, in striking contrast to the calm which had settled on the face of her companion. The arms too were stretched out in an intensity of purpose that death had been unable to paralyze, and the fingers were clenched on a bit of a chain composed of coins connected by knotted links of gold. Could it be that the parting of this chain, and the severance from what it held, was the last agonizing idea which had passed through the poor creature's mind?

As Roderick gazed, a feeble wail hard by gave a new turn to his musings. Not many steps away, but where the sand sloped inwards to the protected waters of the bay, he descried a bundle of clothing, and while he looked it seemed to move, and again the wail was heard. Taking it up he found the bundle to be a tiny infant, warmly wrapped up in many shawls and wound in a life-preserver. The poor drowned mother had probably given her last care to make the little one as safe as she could, and by a miracle she had succeeded. The lightness and smallness of the tiny bundle had secured its safety. While heavier